A Little Night Nuance
by tristero
In a post titled “A Little Nuance”Matt writes:
Perhaps this is just pointless hairsplitting, but I feel I should say that while I’m not at all happy with the precedents Bush is setting with regard to presidential power, that I think the case for strong executive power as such is actually pretty strong. The trouble comes from the nexus…[etc.]
We’ll get to whether or not there’s a little nuance, a lot, or none, in Matt’s post in a moment. But one thing I can certainly say is that Matt was not splitting hairs. The trouble comes from the nexus between the world of reality and the assertion of a non-existent realm of principles (ideas) co-existent with that reality but independent of it. In short, there’s a little bit of an epistemological incoherence goin’ on.
Inadvertently, Matt has fallen for one of the oldest trick in the rightwing’s rhetorical playbook. They often assert a crude dualism where principles are divorced from reality, where mind exists apart from the matter of the brain, where you can just decide things and make them happen. Some examples of this strategy in action:
Regarding Alito, I was once asked, “Don’t you think that, in principle, a president has the right to pick a Supreme Court justice in agreement with his ideology?” “In principle, isn’t the removal of Saddam Hussein a good thing?” “Looked purely in regards to whose position it furthers and whose it doesn’t, were not the peace protestors of early 2003 ojectively pro-Saddam?”
The problem with such characterizations is that the rhetorical tactic of “in principle” reifies a supernatural world. In principle, liberating people from a harsh tyrant should spread democracy. In principle, taxes should be for an absolute minimum of government service. In principle, the abolition of property will lead to greater happiness. In principle, I clearly deserve a Lamborghini for my next birthday.
Despite the obvious contradiction that leads to sophomoric late night yakking – hey dude, you’re saying that in principle, discussions that take place on the “in principle” playing field are meaningless – there is no way to have a conversation about such things in the abstract, let alone a nuanced one. The only truly nuanced way to engage the fundamental questions that lurk behind this kind of rhetoric is to talk about specific examples rooted in a specific reality. I’m talking the actual world here, not some hypothetical idea dump.
It’s not, “what are the “principles” involved?” But what does “liberation” mean and what does it look like? Which people? Which tyrant? What is specifically meant by democracy? What is the cost? What are the alternatives? What are the legal and moral issues? And so on.
Yes, Matt never says “in principle” He simply talks about a “strong case” to be made for a “strong executive” if we set aside any specific examples, such as Bush. In other words, he’s speaking abstractly. Or in principle.
But the point of the “unitary executive” bullshit is not, and never has been about, an abstract principle. It was merely a rhetorical tactic designed to obscure quite specific actions that have morphed the office of the president of a democratic republic into the seat of a proto-dictatorship. This is not an argument about principles (update: within an agreed democratic framework) but a struggle with people bound and determined to effect a paradigm shift (or if you prefer, a revolution). That is all it is. And that is enough.
It is plain weird, to say the least! to talk about a “case” pro or con “strong executive power” divorced from any specific instance. That is especially true when the country is grappling with a president who wants to, and does, order people to be tortured; orders prisoners held without trial or any cause except his whim; seeks to immunize retroactively those who colluded with him on the illegal spying of Americans; orders wars to be fought for no clear reason; and so on through the list of horribles we are all to familiar with.
There is no nuance whatsoever in such an attempt at a discussion. Nor is Matt splitting hairs because there are no hairs, ie, nothing real, to split. There is simply dissociation.
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[Updated immediately after posting for clarity and to correct typos.]